10 lessons from Wale Tinubu

If you were to ask Group Chief Executive of Oando PLC, Africa’s leading indigenous energy solutions provider listed on the Nigerian and Johannesburg Stock exchanges, Mr Wale Tinubu, how to build a successful business, he would probably say the first thing you need is the ‘can do spirit.’

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He'll likely go a step further to instil it into you that “someone is going to trust you, but you should never doubt yourself and your capacities. Everyone is going to laugh at you, but the same people who laughed at you will tomorrow revere you for being able to be true to your self-worth by saying ‘I can make a difference.’”
Then he’d probably tell you to accept the fact that you’re never going to have the capital to start up your business, therefore, you’ll need to use unconventional means to raise it.
These principles helped Tinubu 20 odd years ago when he set up his mind to go into a private business and other entrepreneurs have sworn by these principles to work.
Start where you are. Ask an average Nigerian entrepreneur what his/her biggest challenge is and one would hear “start-up capital.” Tinubu’s answer to that is: “You’re never going to have enough capital, so forget about it. You’re going to need to be innovative.”
He said raising capital to do a business would always be a challenge to African entrepreneur, but it doesn’t mean you can’t achieve your goals.
“The reason why an entrepreneur succeeds is that he sees value where it exists or it is ignored and you take the resources you have, however limited, and you start to build that value. Most of the successful business in the world today started in the garage. I started in the garage with no capital.” He said he started off with borrowed office supplies from his father’s firm, borrowed telephone from the family house and N2,000 from his mother.
While speaking with a group of Global Shapers in Abuja a couple of months ago, Tinubu also advised that you’ve got to take it slow, one step at a time. “You’re never going to achieve all in one day,” but you’ve got to keep moving. “There’s something about business: if you’re not moving, then you’re failing. You’ve got to keep moving,” he said.
Create a plan.  Tinubu believes in measurable result. Therefore, he creates a plan “that says this is what I want to achieve, this is how I want to achieve it, this is the timeframe for doing it. So, we send time researching how is it done,” he added.
Create a team of people who could do it well. For him, it was looking for people within the organisation who had capacity to deliver and who were passionate, of course.
Partnerships, he said are very important to successful ventures. “We would go round the world to look for partners that will share in our experience and support,” he said of his company, adding that first, create your structure and then back it up with your money.” He said this shows how serious you are at succeeding. “You will always have doubts, but do not allow your doubts to overwhelm your desire to achieve great things. Get involved in whatever it is you want to do,” he added.
There will always be an opportunity and when it does come, jump on it and then approach it  with all seriousness as the first one, he advised.
A 2012 Venture Capital report had that Tinubu, even as a student, was always on the look-out for new ways to make money. It was said that he used his school fees as working capital to travel to Europe for the purpose of purchasing luxury German cars to resell. He would drive the car through Europe and back to London, while trying his best to sell it off for a profit on the way, it was said. It was also said that Tinubu “repeated this operation about four to five times, and each time he netted a profit of about $5,000. He was only 21, but he was building the foundation for a future in deal making,” the report said.
Tinubu, while fielding questions from Cable Network News (CNN) Zain Verjee on African Voices, also pointed out that credibility and integrity are entrepreneur’s biggest asset, if he/she were to be successful.
Credibility and integrity are his company’s biggest selling point, as he put it. “When you start something and you said we want to do it properly, you want to do in it world class fashion, it sticks to your mind. If we said we’d deliver to you at 3 o’clock, the ship will be there to deliver to you, to the rigs, to the wet woods, as at when we said we would. And every time we did that, they’ll say to us "we never knew it was possible to receive your fuel at the time you booked it,” he said, to reinforce his point.
He told the Global Shapers that “when the opportunity comes, credibility and integrity are absolutely important.” He told the story of how, when he was starting up, he was happy someone would even consider giving him a loan and whenever it was time to pay up, he would be the first person seen to pay every month.
“I was so happy anybody would lend me money and I was the first guy to wake up in the morning to pay. I ran there out of respect because somebody trusted me and I noticed that every single time I couldn’t pay up, I was given more money. They say “look, don’t worry, here’s more cash and I thought is there something that I am doing wrong?” he said, smiling.
“After a while, you’ll learn to trust your gut feelings, trust your instincts, and use them to drive yourself. Have enough confidence in yourself to really push yourself to the end,” he also advised.
Aspire for more. In spite of everything he has done and accomplished, he still feels that moment of accomplishment has not arrived yet. “I am far from satisfied. I still think that we’ve only just scratched the surface,” he said in the African Voices interview.
Accept that challenges are part of your journey. “I like challenges. I like to think we can do anything we set our minds on to do. I am also very inspired by the power of people. And we’ve seen it happen. And we invariably succeeded all because we accept that there are bumps along the way,” he said.
Take risks. It’s part of being a successful entrepreneur. At 26, he took what some might call the biggest risk of his life. He took $100,000 loan which attracted 10 per cent interest per month.
Take care of the environment you’re doing business in. “If you can build a big company, surely you can build a bigger social net worth. Do something out of love,” he said. Add that to investing in indigenous expatriates.
Yes, if you asked Wale Tinubu how he would advise young entrepreneurs, he’d say first of all, you need the fundamental belief that you can do it – the can do spirit; second, build a very strong partnership and third, be persistent, never give up. “There’s going to be lots of obstacles to be faced, just view them as learning opportunities and never give up. Trust yourself, trust your gut feelings and use it,” he’d say.
The man Wale Tinubu
Wale Tinubu led Oando as the African company to achieve a secondary listing on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, achieving another milestone with the completion of the Canadian oil & Gas firms, Exile Resource, which gave birth to Oando Energy Resources (OER).
He is currently most recognised for turning a mono-product called Oando Marketing into an energy giant with investments across the energy chain.
Just this month, his company announced that it completed acquisition of Medal Oil and that it reduced debt through conversion of Oando PLC loan to equity. It also announced that by the end of the month, it would acquire the $1.65 billion ConocoPhillips.
He started his career with the family’s law firm, K.O. Tinubu & Co. where he worked on corporate and petroleum law assignments.
He was selected as a Young Global Leader (Business) in 2007 by the World Economic Forum and Member of the Global Agenda Council for the future of Africa in 2008 also by the World Economic Forum. He was named one of the Top 10 CEOs in the world by ASKMEN magazine.
In 2010, he won the Africa’s ‘Business Leader of the Year’ award by the African Business Magazine and the Commonwealth Business Council on the basis of his contributions to the development of the African oil and gas industry. In 2011, he was awarded the ‘African Business Leader of the Year’ by Africa Investor.
He has also been nominated for the Africa Investor Capital Markets Personality of the Year for the Ai Institutional Investment Summit- Index Awards shortlist 2012.
Tinubu has a Bachelor’s Degree in Law (LLB) from the University of Liverpool, England, in 1988 and a Master’s degree in Law (LLM) from the London School of Economics where he specialised in International Finance and Shipping in 1989.